(I would have “commented” on David’s comment to my “Telling Stories, Living Stories” post, but the system wouldn’t allow me to). David, your earlier post from three years ago, sharing your practice of noticing stories, is very relevant to what I was also noticing. And I am still wondering, using the metaphor that a writer of fiction does something similar to what we all do when we compose the stories by which live, whether there is a further avenue to explore. In the realm of explicit fiction writing, the experience of a character “coming alive” is often described in terms that suggest that the “author” and his character start to proceed independently of one another. I wonder if there can similarly be a movement toward independence in our own psyches that allows a new direction to be taken and  a new vision to arise above the body of convention that rules our conditioned lives (a body of convention which may, like the author of a book, claim to be in charge of the overall narrative process). Hayward, I feel out of my depth here. Does this sound like a license to abandon conscience and decorum? Or does the movement toward mental health sometimes involve the “coming alive” of a recent arrival into the domain of the self, an arrival that recognizes its own need to be free of its founding conditions ? –Michael
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Well done Hayward! Very clear. Want to reflect on this awhile. :-)
Best wishes,
David
Good Morning
What a pleasure to dip into such a lively discussion.
There are several ways to interpret the phrase “see through the story†In one manner the story contours and shapes our perception. We are trapped inside the story. Another way to interpret the phrase “see through the story†is to make it transparent by recognizing it as merely story.
In our recent cognitive psychologies we were taught to speak a new, more positive story, but as David points out, even a new story has its own set of assumptions and does not represent any absolute truth. What TSK offers is a vision that allows us to see through story so that its form does not obscure its essence as time, space and knowledge.
There has been much discussion among psychologists about the necessity of “egoâ€.
They argue that if we destroyed the ego, as they charge Eastern traditions attempt, we would be psychotic. Here again TSK can shed some light. It is useful to delineate between “ego function†and “ego identityâ€. Ego function is a way of knowing, a way of ordering and organizing time and space. The realm of form and identity is a consequence of ego function. It allows us to live by what Freud called the “reality principleâ€. TSK does not destroy ego function, it merely presents ordinary appearance as a way of knowing; a way of organizing space and time into form and identity
It is “ego identity†that TSK challenges. The belief and experience that we are a separate entity; separate from all we perceive. It is this “ego identity†that is a cause of suffering. To the question both David and Michael pose, “what triggers the need for a new way of seeing?†we might answer; it is our own personal sense of suffering that signals the need for seeing in a new way, a new paradigm if you will, in which space is always available and time is the active agent. This shift in paradigm decentralizes self and the self referencing interpretative tendencies that is the cause of much suffering.
Hayward
Hi again Michael,
One of my favorite passages in your recent book, “Asleep At The Wheel Of Time”, you wrote, I assume after having spent many hours working with people in the last days and hours of their lives:
“With all life histories, the years that in the beginning seem endless eventually give way to an accelerating finitude. Years, months, days, and finally hours come starkly into focus, and finally it can no longer be denied. There is not much left of life. Suddenly, strangely, everything is for the last time and time itself is hurtling past. Or perhaps, at last, time is running straight into the heart.”
When in daily living, “life comes starkly into focus, and finally it can no longer be denied”, isn’t that the point where fiction writer’s character comes alive , and where living being & self-stories collide? The character’s conflict? The ‘self’ is exposed?
David
Hi Michael,
Not trying to speak for Hayward, just investigating my own process moving through time, and it seems to me the usual, the conventional, is a contextualization I’ve accepted. Some of the context I’ve assumed is a kind of shorthand for the status-quot – the ‘self-evident’. The self-evident gets attached to the on-going story, even the new narratives, as the ‘whole’ contextualization evolves trough time and space. The contextualization may well include bogus assumptions and emotional attachments that skew my view of the ‘self-evident’ – the historical and reasoned account of what I’ve put together.
It seems that when I’m moved to question my account, my story and underlying assumptions, that space becomes available for other possibilities to present themselves. And I ask, was I correct to assume this or that notion as fact? So inquiry seems to create the space for new narratives. But you seem to be asking prior to that, what creates the realization there is a need to inquire? What triggers the need to change? (maybe I’m wrong, you can further clue me in.)
For me, the need for important, life-altering change is often triggered by pain, but it could be triggered by love, and I suppose any significant emotion or trauma. But the trigger for root changes seems to me to occur when the mind aligns with the heart at the intersection of significant life events. For me it happens over time as I am aware of numerous alignments and events, time-space-knowledge are key elements, as is self-reflection or inquiry.
You were wondering does the ‘self’ arrive at recognition of its own need to be free of its founding conditions, and that was so for me, but it took me time, and self-inquiry to uncover, to bring to the surface a new story of recognition of what those founding conditions were.
I imagine with writing the founding story and conditions, a fictional character would encounter a new storyline that alters his or her’s perceptions of where the old story fell short, and a new more accurate self-story begins to emerge.
David